Our student loan complaint system is open for business

Since we opened our doors, student loan borrowers have told us about some of the frustrations they sometimes face with their lenders, servicers, and debt collectors. Borrowing for college should be the best investment you’ll make, but for many Americans, paying off those student loans is a real challenge.

For several years, federal student loan borrowers have had the Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid Ombudsman to help bring their concerns to financial institutions. But for millions of students and their families, federal student loans don’t cover the full cost of college and they need private student loans to make ends meet.

However, private student loans – which don’t always carry the same consumer protections as federal student loans – have been overseen by a patchwork of government agencies. In the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Congress established an Ombudsman for private student loans within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to assist borrowers with private student loan complaints. This means a single federal agency is now responsible for watching out for all students and families who choose to borrow private student loans.

If you file a complaint, we’ll work with your lender or servicer to get a response. While we certainly can’t make your debt disappear, we can help bring your concern to your financial institution’s attention. If you don’t have a specific complaint or question, but want to tell us what is – or is not – working in the student loan market, we invite you to tell your story.

And while the Consumer Bureau has only been open for a short time, we’ve been hard at work to gather the facts and provide tools to help you make good decisions about student loans. We launched an online tool, the Student Debt Repayment Assistant, to help you navigate the maze of student loan repayment options. We also launched Know Before You Owe: student loans and worked with the Department of Education to develop a draft “financial aid shopping sheet” for schools to improve the student loan information they give to students.

Our team at the Bureau will keep working to give you the tools and the information to make sound financial decisions on student debt – and to figure out your options in case things don’t go according to plan. These days, we all seem to know someone having a tough time with their student loans, so share this new resource by e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook (just use one of the buttons below). With your participation, we can help make the student loan market work better for all of us.